Benjamin's Silence

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Benjamin's SilenceAuthor(s): Shoshana FelmanSource: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 25, No. 2, "Angelus Novus": Perspectives on Walter Benjamin(Winter, 1999), pp. 201-234Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344200Accessed: 09/12/2010 19:55

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2/35

Benjamin's

Silence

Shoshana

Felman

Nothing

more

desolating

than his

acolytes,

nothing

more

godforsa-

ken

than his adversaries.No

name

that

would

be

more

fittingly

hon-

ored

by

silence.

WALTER

ENJAMIN,

One-Way

treet"

"Expect

from

me

no

word

of

my

own. Nor should

I

be

capable

of

saying

anything

new;

for in the room

where someone writes the noise

is

so

great....

Let

him

who has

something

to

say

step

forward and

be

silent "

KARL

KRAUS,

uoted by

Walter

Benjamin2

Conversationstrives

toward

silence,

and

the listener is

really

the

si-

lent

partner.

The

speaker

receives

meaning

from

him;

the silent one

is the

unappropriated

ource of

meaning.

WALTER

ENJAMIN,

"TheMetaphysics f Youth"3

I

propose

here

to address-and listen to-that

element

in

Benjamin's

language

and

writing

that

specifically, ecisively

remains

beyond

commu-

nication.

"In all

language

and

linguistic

creations,"

Benjamin

has

said,

1. Walter

Benjamin,

"One-Way

Street,"

trans. Edmund

Jephcott,

Selected

Writings,

1913-1926,

ed.

Marcus

Bullock and Michael

W.

Jennings

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1996),

p.

469,

from

a

section written

in

commemoration

of

Karl Kraus entitled "Monument to

a Warrior."

2.

Benjamin,

"Karl

Kraus,"

Reflections:Essays,Aphorisms,AutobiographicalWritings,

rans.

Jephcott,

ed. Peter Demetz

(New

York,

1986),

p.

243.

3.

Benjamin,

"The

Metaphysics

of

Youth,"

trans.

Rodney Livingstone,

Selected

Writings,

p.

6;

hereafter abbreviated

"MY."

Critical

Inquiry

25

(Winter 1999)

0 1999

by

Shoshana Felman.

All

rights

reserved. Permission to

reprint may

be obtained

only

from the

author.

201


3/35

202

ShoshanaFelman

Benjamin's

ilence

"there

remains in

addition to

what

can be

conveyed

something

that can-

not be

communicated.

... It

is

the task of the

translator to release in his

own

language

that

pure

language

which is exiled

among

alien

tongues,

to

liberate the

language imprisoned

in

a work." In

Benjamin's

own

work,

in his

abbreviated,

cryptic

style

and in the

essentially elliptical

articulation

of his

thought,

a

surcharge

of

meaning

is

quite

literally imprisoned

in

instances of

silence. It

is

the task of the translator

of

Benjamin's

own work

to

listen

to

these

instances

of

silence,

whose

implications,

I

will

try

to

show,

are at once

stylistic, philosophical,

historical,

and

autobiographical.

"Midway

between

poetry

and

theory," my

critical

amplification

and inter-

pretation

of this

silence-my

own

translation of the

language

that is

still

"imprisoned"

in

Benjamin's

work-will thus focus on what

Benjamin

himself has underscored

but

what remains

unheard,

unheeded

in

the

critically repetitive

mechanical

reproduction

of his work: "that element

in

a

translation

which

goes beyond

transmittal of

subject

matter."4

1

Warsand Revolutions

It is

customary

to view

Benjamin

essentially

as an

abstract

philoso-

pher,

a

critic

and a thinker of

modernity

(and/or

of

postmodernity)

in

culture

and

in

art.

In

contradistinction to this dominant

approach,

I

pro-

pose

to look at

Benjamin

far more

specifically

and more

concretely

as a

thinker,

a

philosopher,

and a

narrator

of

the

wars and

revolutions of the

twentieth

century.

"Wars

and

revolutions,"

writes

Hannah

Arendt,

"have

thus

far

determined the

physiognomy

of

the

twentieth

century.

And

as

distinguished

from

the

nineteenth-century

ideologies-such

as national-

ism and internationalism,

capitalism

and

imperialism,

socialism and com-

munism,

which,

though

still

invoked

by many

as

justifying

causes,

have

4.

Benjamin,

"The Task

of the

Translator,"

trans.

Harry

Zohn,

Selected

Writings,pp.

261, 259,

257.

Shoshana Felman

is

the Thomas

E.

Donnelley

Professor of French

and

Comparative

Literature

at

Yale

University.

She

is the

author

of

The

Literary peech

Act: Don

Juan

withAustin,or Seduction n Two

Languages

(1984),

Writing

nd

Madness:

Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis1985),Jacques

Lacan

and

the Adventure

of Insight

(1987),

and What

Does

a WomanWant?

Reading

and Sexual

Difference

1993).

She

is

also the editor

of Literature

nd

Psycho-

analysis:

The

Question

of

Reading--Otherwise

(1982)

and

coauthor,

with

Dori

Laub,

of

Testimony:

rises

of

Witnessing

n

Literature,

Psychoanalysis,

nd

His-

tory

(1992).


4/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter1999 203

lost contact

with the

major

realities of our world-war

and revolution

...

have outlived

all their

ideological justifications."5

The seeds

of total

war

developed

as

early

as the First World

War,

when the

distinction between soldiers

and

civilians

was no

longer

respected

because

it was inconsistent with the new

weapons

then

used.

...

The

magnitude

of the violence let loose

in

the

First

World

War

might

indeed have been

enough

to cause revolutions

in

its after-

math even without

any revolutionary

tradition

and

even

if no

revolu-

tion had ever occurred

before.

To be

sure,

not even

wars,

let alone

revolutions,

are ever com-

pletely

determined

by

violence. Where violence rules

absolutely,...

everything

and

everybody

must fall silent.

[OR,

pp.

14,

18]

In

my

reading,

Walter

Benjamin's

life work bears witness to the

ways

in

which events

outlive their

ideologies

and

consummate,

dissolve the

grounding

discourse of their

nineteenth-century

historic

and

utopian

meanings.

Benjamin's

texts

play

out, thus,

one

against

the other and

one

through

the

other,

both the

"constellation

that

poses

the threat of total

annihilation

through

war

against

the

hope

for

the

emancipation

of all

mankind

through

revolution"

(OR,

p.

11),

and the

deadly

succession of

historical convulsions

through

which culture-in the voice of

Benjamin

who

is its

most

profound

witness-must

fall

silent.

Theory

and

Autobiography

Silence can be either the outside of

language

or a

position

inside

language,

a state of noiselessness or

wordlessness.

Falling

silent

is,

how-

ever,

not a state but an event.

It

is the

significance

of the

event

that

I

will

try

to understand and

think

through

in

the

present

essay.

What

does

it

mean that culture-in the voice of its most

profound

witness-must fall

silent?

What

does

it

mean

for

culture? What does

it

mean for

Benjamin?

How does

Benjamin

come to

represent

and to

incorporate concretely,

personally,

the

physiognomy

of

the twentieth

century?

And

how

in

turn

is this

physiognomy

reflected,

concretized,

in

Benjamin's

own face?

In

searching

for

answers

to

these

questions,

I

will

juxtapose

and

grasp

together

theoretical

and

autobiographical

texts.

Benjamin's

own

work includes

a

singular

record of an

autobiographical

event

that,

to

my

mind,

is

crucial to the author's theories as much as to his

destiny

(al-

though

critics

usually neglect

it).

Benjamin

narrates this event in one of

his

rare

moments of

personal

directness,

in

the

(lyrical) autobiographical

text entitled

"A

Berlin Chronicle."

I

will

interpret

this event

together

with,

and

through,

two central theoretical

essays

that constitute the corner-

5. Hannah

Arendt,

On Revolution

(Harmondsworth,

1990),

p.

11;

hereafter

abbrevi-

ated OR.


5/35

204

ShoshanaFelman

Benjamin's

ilence

stones

of

Benjamin's

late

work:

"The

Storyteller"

and

"Theses on

the

Phi-

losophy

of

History."

In

reading

the most

personal,

the most

idiosyncratic

autobiographical notations through the most far reaching, groundbreak-

ing

theoretical

constructions,

my

effort

will

be to

give Benjamin's

theory

a

face.6 The

conceptual

question

that will

override

and

guide

this

effort

will

be,

What

is

the relation

between

the

theory

and

the event

(and

what,

in

general,

is

the

relationship

between

events and

theories)?

How

does

the

theory

arise out

of

the

concrete drama of an

event? How does

the

concrete drama of an event

become

theory?

And

how do both

event and

theory

relate

to

silence

(and

to

Benjamin's

embodiment of

silence)?

2

Theories

of

Silence

Because

my

sense is

that

in

Benjamin,

the

theory

is

(paradoxically)

far less obscure than

the

autobiography,

I

will

start

by reflecting

on

the

two

theoretical

essays-perhaps

Benjamin's

best

known

abstract texts-

of which

I

propose.

to

underscore the

common theoretical

stakes.

I

will

argue

that both "The

Storyteller"

and "Theses on the

Philosophy

of His-

tory"

can be construed as two

theories of

silence derived

from,

and

related

to,

the

two

world wars:

"The

Storyteller,"

written in

1936,

is retro-

spectively, explicitly

connected with

the

First

World

War;

"Theses on the

Philosophy

of

History,"

written

shortly

before

Benjamin's

death in

1940,

represents

his

ultimate

rethinking

of the

nature of historical

events

and

of the task of

historiography

in the

face

of

the

developments

of

the

begin-

ning

of

the Second World War.

I will

suggest

that

these two texts

are

in

effect tied

up together.

I

propose

to read them one

against

the other and one

through

the other,

as

two

stages

in

a

larger philosophical

and

existential

picture,

and as

two

variations of a

global Benjaminian

theory

of wars and

silence.

I

argue

therefore that "The

Storyteller"

and

"Theses" can

be viewed

as

two theo-

retical variations of

the same

profound

underlying

text.

My methodology

is

here

inspired by

the

way

in

which

Benjamin

himself discusses-in his

youth-"Two

Poems

by

Friedrich

H61derlin,"

n

analyzing

in

the

two

texts

(as

he

puts

it)

"not

...

their

likeness which is

nonexistent" but their

6. This textual

juxtaposition

of the

theory

and the

autobiography

will be

illuminated,

in

its

turn,

by

Benjamin's

work as a

literary

critic,

especially

in the

early literary essays

on

H6lderlin,

on

Dostoyevsky,

and on Goethe's

Elective

Affinities.

I

will

thus borrow

metaphors

from

Benjamin's

own

literary

criticism and will in

turn use them as

interpretive

tools and

as evocative

stylistic

echoes.

My

methodology

will

be

attentive, therefore,

to three distinct

levels of the text that the

analysis

will

grasp together:

the

conceptual

level of the

theory,

the

narrative level

of

the

autobiography,

and the

figurative

level of the

literary

criticism.


6/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter

1999 205

"'comparativeness,'"

and in

treating

them-despite

their

distance-as

two "versions"

(or

two

transformations)

of the same

profound text.7

The

End

of

Storytelling

"The

Storyteller"

is

presented

as

a

literary

study

of the nineteenth-

century

Russian

writer Nikolai

Leskov

and of

his

striking

art of

storytell-

ing.

But the

essay's

main concern

is

in

depicting storytelling

as a lost

art:

the achievements

of the

nineteenth-century

model serve

as the back-

ground

for a differential

diagnosis

of the

ways

in

which

storytelling

s lost

to the twentieth

century.Something happened, Benjamin suggests,

that has

brought

about the

death-the

agony-of storytelling,

both as a

literary

genre

and as

a

discursive

mode

in

daily

life.

Benjamin

announces

thus

a

historical

drama of

"the end

of

storytelling"--or

an

innovative

cultural

theory

of

the

collapse

of narration-as

a critical

and theoretical

appraisal

(through

Leskov)

of

a

general

historical state of

affairs.

The

theory,

thereby,

is

Benjamin's way

of

grasping

and of

bringing

into

consciousness

an

unconscious

cultural

phenomenon

and an

imper-

ceptible

historical

process

that

has taken

place

outside

anyone's

awareness

and

that can therefore be

deciphered,

understood,

and

noticed

only

ret-

rospectively,

in its

effects

(its

symptoms).

The

effects,

says

Benjamin,

are

that

today, quite symptomatically,

it has become

impossible

o

tell

a

story.

The

art of

storytelling

has been lost

along

with the

ability

to share

experiences.

Less

and

less

frequently

do

we encounter

people

with the

ability

to

tell a tale

properly.

...

It is as if

something

that

seemed inalienable

to us

... were taken

from us: the

ability

to

exchange experiences.8

Among

the reasons

Benjamin gives

for this

loss-the

rise of

capital-

ism,

the sterilization

of life

through

bourgeois

values,

the decline of

craftsmanship,

the

growing

influence

of the media and the

press-the

first and

most dramatic

is that

people

have been struck dumb

by

the

First

World

War.

From

ravaged

battlefields,

they

have returned

mute to

a

wrecked

world

in

which

nothing

has remained

the

same

except

the

sky.

This vivid and dramatic

explanation

is

placed

right away

at the

beginning

of the

text,

like

an

explosive

opening argument

or an initial shock

or

blast

inflicted

on

the reader

and with whose force of shock the whole remain-

der of

the

text

will have to

cope

and

to

catch

up.

The

opening

is,

indeed,

as forceful

as it

is

ungraspable.

The text

itself does

not

quite

process

it;

7.

Benjamin,

"Two Poems

by

Friedrich

H61derlin,"

trans.

Stanley Corngold,

Selected

Writings,p.

33.

8.

Benjamin,

"The

Storyteller:

Reflections on the

Works of Nikolai

Leskov,"

Illumina-

tions:

Essays

and

Reflections,

rans.

Zohn,

ed. Arendt

(New

York,

1969),

p.

83;

hereafter

abbre-

viated

"S."


7/35

206

Shoshana

elman

Benjamins

ilence

nor

does

it

truly integrate

it with

the

arguments

that follow. And this

ungraspability

or

unintegratability

of the

beginning

is not a mere coinci-

dence; it

duplicates

and illustrates the

point

of the text, that the war has

left

an

impact

that has

struck dumb

its

survivors,

with the

effect

of

inter-

rupting

now the

continuity

of

telling

and of

understanding.

The utter-

ance

repeats

in

act the

content

of the

statement:

it

must remain somewhat

unassimilable.

In

Benjamin,

however,

it is

productive

to retain what cannot be as-

similated. And

it is

crucially important

in

my

view that what cannot be

assimilated

crystallizes

around a date. Before

it

can be

understood,

the

loss of narrative is

dated.

Its

process

is traced

back to the

collective,

mas-

sive trauma of the First World War.

With the

[First]

World

War a

process began

to

become

apparent

which

has not halted

since

then. Was

it

not noticeable

at

the end of

the war that

men returned

from the battlefield

grown

silent-not

richer,

but

poorer

in

communicable

experience?

What ten

years

later

was

poured

out

in

the flood

of war

books

was

anything

but

experi-

ence

that

goes

from

mouth

to mouth. And there was

nothing

re-

markable about

that.

For

never

has

experience

been contradicted

more thoroughly than strategic experience by tactical warfare,

economic

experience

by

inflation,

bodily

experience by

mechanical

warfare,

moral

experience by

those

in

power.

A

generation

that had

gone

to school on a horse-drawn streetcar

now

stood under the

open

sky

in

a

countryside

in

which

nothing

remained

unchanged

but the

clouds,

and beneath

these

clouds,

in a field

of

force of destructive

torrents and

explosions,

was the

tiny, fragile

human

body.

["S,"

p.

84]

Thus,

narration was reduced to silence

by

the

First World War.

What

has

emerged

from the destructive torrents-from the

noise of the

explo-

sions-was

only

the muteness of the

body

in its

absolutely helpless,

shel-

terless

vulnerability. Resonating

to this dumbness

of the

body

is the

storyteller's

dumbness.

But

this fall

to silence of narration

is contrasted

with,

and covered

by,

the

new

loudness,

the

emerging

noise of

information-"journalism

being

clearly

...

the

expression

of the

changed

function

of

language

in

the world

of

high capitalism."9

In

a world

in which

public

discourse

is

usurped by

the commercial

aims and

by

the

noise of

information,

soldiers

returning

from the

First

9.

Benjamin,

"Karl

Kraus,"

p.

242.

Compare

"S,"

pp.

88-91.

Information

and narra-

tion

are not

simply

two

competing

modes

of discourse

(two

functions of

language). They

are in fact two

strategies

of

living

and

communicating,

two levels

of

existence

within culture.

Narration seeks

a

listener, information,

a

consumer. Narration is addressed

to a

community,

information is

directed

toward

a market.

Insofar

as

listening

is an

integral

part

of

narration,

while

marketing

is

always part

of

information,

narration

is attentive and

imaginatively

pro-

ductive

(in

its concern

for the

singularity,

the

unintelligibility

of the

event),

while infor-


8/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter1999

207

World

War

can

find no social or collective

space

in which to

integrate

their death

experience.

Their trauma must remain

a

private

matter

that

cannot be symbolized collectively. It cannot be exchanged, it must fall

silent.

The

Unforgettable

Gone are the

days

when

dying

was "a

public process

in

the

life of the

individual and a

most

exemplary

one"

("S,"

p.

93).

Irrespective

of

the

battlefield

experience,

mortality

is

self-deceptively

denied

in

sterilized

bourgeois

life,

which

strives

to

keep

death out

of

sight symbolically

and

literally.10

Narration

was, however,

born from

the

pathos

of

an

ultimate ex-

change

between the

dying

and the

living.

Medieval

paintings represent

the

origin

of

storytelling: they

show

the

archetypal

or

inaugural

site

of

narration to be the

deathbed,

in

which the

dying

man

(or

the

original

narrator)

reviews his life

(evokes

his

memories)

and thus

addresses the

events and

lessons

of his

past

to those

surrounding

him. A

dying speaker

is

a

naturally

authoritative

storyteller;

he borrows his

authority

from

death."I

Today,

however,

agonizers

die in

private

and without

authority.

They

are attended

by

no listeners.

They

tell no

stories. And there is no

author-

ity-and certainly

no wisdom-that has

survived the war.

"We have no

counsel either for ourselves or for others.

After

all,

counsel is less an

an-

swer to a

question

than a

proposal concerning

the

continuation

of a

story

which is

just

unfolding"

("S,"

p.

86).

It is not

simply

that there is

no

longer

a

proposal

for

historical

or

narrative continuation. The First World War

is the

first

war that

can

no

longer

be narrated.

Its witnesses and its

participants

have lost their

stories.

The sole

signification

which "The

Storyteller"

can henceforth articulate

is that of mankind's

double loss: a loss of the

capacity

to

symbolize;

a

loss

of the

capacity

to

moralize.12

mation is mechanical and

reproductive

(in

its

concern for

the event's

exchangeability,

explainability,

and

reproducibility).

Benjamin

was concerned not

only

with

communication but

(implicitly,

essentially)

with education.

Educationally,

these two

modes conflict

not

only

as two

separate

roles or

institutions.

They

wage

a battle within

every

institution

and within

every discipline

of knowl-

edge. They

are

in

conflict,

in

effect,

within

every pedagogy. They struggle (to

this

day)

within

every university.

10.

"Today people

live

in

rooms that

have

never

been touched

by

death and

...

when

their end

approaches they

are

stowed

away

in

sanatoria

or

hospitals

by

their

heirs"

("S,"

p.

94).

11.

"Death

is

the

sanction

of

everything

the

storyteller

has

to tell. He

has

borrowed

his

authority

from

death"

("S,"

p.

94).

12.

Since

the

storyteller

(in

Leskov

and

his

tradition)

is "a

righteous

man,"

a

"teacher"

and a

"sage"

("S"

pp.

109,

108),

what now falls to muteness is the

very possibility

of

righ-


9/35

208

ShoshanaFelman

Benjamin's

ilence

A

Philosophy f

History

The outburst of the Second World War in 1939

(three

years

after the

publication

of "The

Storyteller") brings Benjamin

to

write,

in

1940-in

the months that were

to

be the last ones of his

life-what

I

have

called

his second

theory

of

silence,

entitled "Theses on

the

Philosophy

of

His-

tory."

At

first,

this text seems

altogether

different

from "The

Storyteller."

Its

topic

is not

literature but

history,

of which

the

essay

offers

not a

diag-

nosis but

a

theory.

The

theory

is

programmatic:

its

tone

is not

descriptive

but

prescriptive.

The "theses" are

audaciously

abbreviated

and

provoca-

tively dogmatized. They

do not

explicitly

reflect

on

silence.

The

essay

focuses rather on

(scholarly

and

scientific)

discourses n

history.

The word

silence does not

figure

in

the

text.

And,

yet, speechlessness

is at

the

very

heart

of the reflection and of

the situation of the writer. Like the

storyteller

who falls silent

or

returns

mute

from the First

World

War,

the historian

or the

theorist

of

history

fac-

ing

the

conflagration

of the Second World War

is

equally

reduced o

speech-

lessness:no

ready-made

conceptual

or

discursive

tool,

no discourse about

history

turns out to be sufficient

to

explain

the

nature of this

war;

no

available

conceptual

framework

in

which

history

is

customarily

perceived

proves adequate

or

satisfactory

to understand or to

explain

current his-

torical

developments.

Vis-a-vis

the undreamt-of

events,

what

is

called

for,

Benjamin suggests,

is a

radical

displacement

f

our

frames of reference,

radi-

cal transvaluation

of our

methods and

of our

philosophies

of

history.

The current amazement

that the

things

we are

experiencing

are

"still"

possible

in

the

twentieth

century

is not

philosophical.

This

amazement

is not the

beginning

of

knowledge-unless

it

is

the

knowl-

edge

that the view of

history

which

gives

rise to it is

untenable.13

History

is now

the

property

and the

propriety

of Nazis

(of

those

who

can

control

it

and

manipulate

its

discourse).

It is

by

virtue of a

loyalty

to

history

that

Hitler is

proposing

to

avenge Germany

from

its

defeat

and

its

humiliation

in

the First

World War.

All

the

existing

discourses

on his-

tory

have

proven

ineffective

either

to

predict

or to counteract the

regime

and the

phenomenon

of Hitler.14

teousness. Similarly,

literature as teacher

of

humanity (in

the

manner

of

Leskov)

has lost

its

voice.

In

the

collapse

of narrative as

a

generic, literary

mode of

discourse,

literature as

ethics--"counsel,"

education-is

thus

inherently historically

and

philosophically

reduced

to

silence.

13.

Benjamin,

"Theses on the

Philosophy

of

History,"

Illuminations,

p.

257;

hereafter

abbreviated

"TPH."

14.

Among

the theories of

history

that

Benjamin

critiques

and

"deconstructs"

are

pure

theology (religion), pure

historicism

(positivism), pure

liberalism

(idealism),

and

pure

Marxism

(uncritical

historical

materialism).


10/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter

1999 209

History

in

Nazi

Germany

is

Fascist. Fascism

legitimates

itself in

the

name of

national

identity

on

the basis of

a

unity

and of

a

continuity

of

history. The philosophical tenets of this view are inherited from

nineteenth-century

historicism,

which has

equated

temporality

with

progress,

in

presupposing

time as

an

entity

of natural

development, pro-

gressively

enhancing

maturation

and

advancing

toward

a betterment as

time

(and

history) go by.

Benjamin

rejects

this

view,

which

has become

untenable

vis-a-vis

the traumas

of the twentieth

century.

It is the

victor who forever

represents

the

present conquest

or the

present

victory

as

an

improvement

in

relation

to the

past.

But the

reality

of

history

is

that of the traumatized

by history,

the materialist

reality

of

those who are oppressed by the new victory. Historicism is, however,

based

on an unconscious

identification

with

the discourse

of the victor

and thus

on an uncritical

espousal

of the victor's

narrative

perspective.

"If

one

asks

with

whom

the adherents of historicism

actually

empathize,"

Benjamin

writes,

the answer

is inevitable:

with

the

victor....

Empathy

with

the victor

inevitably

benefits

the rulers. Historical

materialists know

what that

means.

Whoever has

emerged

victorious

participates

to this

day

in

the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those

who are

lying

prostrate. According

to traditional

practice,

the

spoils

are

carried

along

in

the

procession.

They

are called cultural trea-

sures,

and a historical materialist

views them

with

cautious

detach-

ment. For

without

exception

the cultural treasures he

surveys

have

an

origin

which he

cannot

contemplate

without horror.

They

owe

their

existence

not

only

to the efforts of the

great

minds and talents

who have created

them,

but also to the

anonymous

toil of their con-

temporaries.

There is no

document of civilization which is

not at the

same time

a document of barbarism.

And

just

as such a document is

not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it

was transmitted

from one owner to

another.

["TPH,"

p.

256]

Historicism

is thus based on

a

perception

of

history

as

victory.

But

it

is blind to this

presupposition.

So blind

that it does not see the

irony

with which this axiom has been

borrowed-taken to

extremes-by

the

discourses

of Fascism.

Fascism

is, indeed,

quite literally,

a

philosophy

of

history

s

victory.

Unlike

historicism,

it

is

not unconscious of this

prejudice;

it is

grounded

in a

cynical

and

conscious claim

of this

philosophy

of his-

tory.15

Historicism is then based on

a

confusion

between truth and

power.

Real

history

is,

on the

contrary,

the

ineluctable

discrepancy

between the

15.

Compare

Hitler's

harangue

to

his

top

civilian

and

military

officials

in

1939,

on the

occasion of the invasion

of

Poland:

"Destruction of Poland is

in

the

background.

The aim

is elimination of

living

forces,

not

the arrival at a certain line ...

I

shall

give

a

propagandistic


11/35

210

Shoshana

Felman

Benjamin's

ilence

two.16

History

is

the

perennial

conflictual

arena

in

which

collective mem-

ory

is named

as

a

constitutive

dissociation

between

truth and

power.

What,

then,

is the

relation

between

history

and

silence?

In

a

(con-

scious or

unconscious)

historical

philosophy

of

power,

the

powerless

(the

persecuted)

are

constitutionally deprived

of voice.

Because

official

history

is

based on

the

perspective

of the

victor,

the

voice with

which it

speaks

authoritatively

is

deafening;

t

makes us

unaware

of

the fact that

there

remains

in

history

a

claim,

a

discourse that

we

do

not

hear.And

in

relation to

this act of

deafening,

the

rulers of the

moment are

the

heirs of the

rulers of the

past.

History

transmits,

ironically

enough,

a

legacy

of

deafness

in

which

historicists

unwittingly

share. What

is called

progress,

and

what

Benjamin

sees

only

as a

piling

of

catastrophe

upon

catastrophe,

is

therefore the

transmission

of historical

discourse from

ruler to

ruler,

from

one

historical

instance of

power

to

another.

This

transmission is

constitutive of what

is

(misguidedly) perceived

as continu-

ity

in

history.

"The

continuum of

history

is that of

the

oppressors."

"The

history

of the

oppressed

is a

discontinuum."'7

If

history, despite

its

spectacular

triumphal

time,

is

thus

barbarically,

constitutively

conflict

ridden,

the

historian is not

in

possession

of a

space

in

which

to be

removed,

detached,

"objective";

the

philosopher

of

history

cannot be an

outsider to

the conflict. In

the

face of the

deafening appro-

priation

of historical

philosophy by

Fascism;

in

the face of the Nazi

use of

the

most civilized

tools of

technology

and law

for a

most

barbaric racist

persecution,

"objectivity"

does not

exist.

A

historical

articulation

pro-

ceeds

not from an

epistemological

"detachment"

but,

on the

contrary,

from

the

historian's sense of

urgency

and

of

emergency.

18

The tradition of

the

oppressed

teaches us that

the "state of

emer-

gency"

in

which we live

is not the

exception

but

the rule.

We must

attain to a

conception

of

history

that

is

in

keeping

with this

insight.

cause for

starting

the

war,-never

mind

whether it be

plausible

or not.

The victor shall not

be asked later

on whether we

told the truth

or not.

In

starting

and

making

a

war,

not the

right

is

what matters but

victory"

(quoted by

Robert

Jackson,

introduction to

Whitney

Har-

ris,

Tyranny

n

Trial:

TheEvidence

at

Nuremberg

New

York,

1954],

p.

xxxi).

16.

In

this

conception,

Benjamin

is

the

interpreter-the

synthesizer-of

the diverse

legacies

of

Nietzsche, Marx,

and

Freud.

17.

Benjamin, "Paralipomenes et variantes des Theses Sur e conceptde l'histoire, 'Ecrits

franpais,

ed.

Jean-Maurice

Monnoyer

(Paris,

1991),

p.

352;

my

trans.

18.

The

reality

of

history

is

grasped

(articulated)

when the historian

recognizes

histor-

ical state

of

emergency

hat

is,

precisely,

not the one

the ruler has

declared or

that

(in

Hobbes's

tradition,

in

Carl Schmitt's

words)

is

"decided

by

the

sovereign"

(Carl

Schmitt,

Politische

Theologie

Munich,

1922],

a

work cited and

discussed

by

Benjamin

in

his

The

Origin of

German

Tragic

Drama,

trans.

John

Osborne

[1928;

London,

1977],

pp.

65,

74,

239

nn.

14-17;

hereaf-

ter abbreviated

OG.)


12/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter1999 211

Then

we shall

clearly

realize

that

it is our task to

bring

about

a real

state of

emergency,

and this will

improve

our

position

in the

struggle

against

Fascism.

["TPH"

p.

257]

The

theory

of

history

is thus itself

an

intervention

n

the

conflict;

t

is itself

historical.

In the middle of

a

cataclysmic

world war

that

shifts the

grounds

from under our

very

feet,

danger, Benjamin implies,

is

what

triggers

the most

lucid and the most

clairvoyant

grasp

of

history.

Histori-

cal

insight

strikes

surprisingly

and

unexpectedly

in "moments of sudden

illumination"

in

which "we

are

beside

ourselves."'9

Danger

and emer-

gency

illuminate

themselves as the conditions both of

history (of life)

and

of its

theory

(its

knowledge).

New,

innovative theories of

history

(such

that enable

a

displacement

of official

history)

come into

being only

under

duress.

To

articulate

the

past historically

does

not mean to

recognize

it "the

way

it

really

was"

(Ranke).

It means to seize

hold

of a

memory

as it

flashes

up

at a

moment of

danger.

Historical materialism

wishes to

retain

that

image

of the

past

which

unexpectedly

appears

to man

singled

out

by history

at a

moment

of

danger. ["TPH,"p.

255]

In

Benjamin's

own

view,

history-a

line of

catastrophe-is

not

a

movement toward

progress

but

a

movement

toward

(what

Benjamin

calls

enigmatically)

redemption. Redemption-what

historical

struggles

(and

political

revolutions)

are

about-should be understood as

both material-

ist

(Marxist,

political,

interhistorical)

and

theological

(suprahistorical,

transcendent).

Redemption

is

discontinuity, disruption.

It

names

the con-

stant need to catch

up

with

the hidden

reality

of

history

that

always

re-

mains a debt to the oppressed, a debt to the dead of history, a claim the

past

has

on

the

present.

Redemption

is the

allegory

of a future state

of

freedom,

justice, hap-

piness,

and

recovery

of

meaning. History

should

be assessed

only

in

refer-

ence to this state

that

is its

goal.

Historical action should

take

place

as

though

this

goal

were

not

utopian

but

pragmatic.

Yet

it

can

never be

decided

by

a

mortal

if

redemption,

ultimately,

can be immanent to

history

or

if

it is doomed

to

remain

transcendental,

beyond history.

"This

world,"

Benjamin

has written

elsewhere,

"remains

a

mute

world,

from which

mu-

sic will never ring out. Yet to what is it dedicated if not

redemption?"20

19.

Benjamin,

"A

Berlin

Chronicle,"

Reflections,pp.

56, 57;

hereafter abbreviated "BC."

20.

Benjamin,

"Goethe's Elective

Affinities,"

trans.

Corngold,

Selected

Writings,

p.

355;

hereafter abbreviated "GEA."

Redemption

seems, therefore,

to

be linked to the moment of

illumination which

suddenly

and

unexpectedly gives

us the

capacity

to hear

the silence-to

tune into the

unarticulated

and

to hear

what is in

history

deprived

of words.

Redemption

starts

by redeeming

history

from deafness.


13/35

212

ShoshanaFelman

Benjamin's

ilence

Dedicated o

Redemption

When, therefore, will redemption come? Will there be a redemption

after the

Second World

War? Will

there ever be

redemptionfrom

the Sec-

ond World

War?

Benjamin

foresees the task of

the

historian of the future.

He

will

be sad. His

history

will

be the

product

of

his sadness.

Flaubert,

who was familiar with

[the

"cause of

sadness"],

wrote: "Peu

de

gens

devinerontcombien

l a

fallu

&tre

riste

pour

ressusciter

Carthage"

["Few

will

be able to

guess

how

sad one

had to

be

in

order to resusci-

tate

Carthage"].

["TPH,"

p.

256]

Before the

fact,

Benjamin

foresees that

history

will

know

a

holocaust.

After

the

war,

the

historian's task

will

be not

only

to "resuscitate

Carthage"

or to narrate

extermination,

ut

paradoxically,

to save

the

dead:

Nothing

that has

ever

happened

should be

regarded

as lost to his-

tory.

["TPH,"

p.

254]

Only

that historian

will

have the

gift

of

fanning

the

spark

of

hope

in

the

past

who

is

firmly

convinced that even the

dead

will

not be safe

from

the

enemy

if

he wins.

["TPH,"

p.

255;

emphasis

mine;

Benja-

min's

italics]

Thus,

the historian

of

the Second

World

War will

be

sad.

Beyond

sadness,

he

will

have

to

be

intently

vigilant.

In

this

war

particularly,

the

conceptual

question

of the historian's identification

with the victor inad-

vertently

evolves into

a

graver,

far

more serious

question

of

political

com-

plicity.

The task

of the historian of

today

is to avoid

collaborationwith a crimi-

nal

regime

and

with

the discourses of fascism.

Similarly,

the historian

of tomorrow

will

have to be watchful to avoid

complicity

with

history's

barbarism

and with culture's latent

(and

now

patent)

crimes.

Benjamin's

text,

I

argue,

is

the

beginning

of the critical awareness

of the treacherous

questions

of

collaboration

that

so

obsessively preoccupy

us to this

day.

It

is still

early

in the war.

Benjamin

intuitively

senses the

importance

of this

question,

as

it

will

arise

precisely,

later,

out

of

the

Second

World War. The

historian,

Benjamin

suggests,

must be

revolutionary

lest he be

unwit-

tingly complicit.

And

complicity,

for

Benjamin,

is a

graver danger,

a worse

punishment

than death.

Historical

materialism wishes to retain

that

image

of the

past

which

unexpectedly

appears

to man

singled

out

by history

at a moment of

danger.

The

danger

affects both the content of the tradition

and its

receivers.

The

same threat

hangs

over both: that of

becoming

a

tool

of the

ruling

classes.

In

every

era the

attempt

must

be made anew to


14/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter

1999 213

wrest tradition

away

from a

conformism that is

about to

overpower

it.

["TPH,"

p.

255]

The

historian,

paradoxically,

has no choice but to be a

revolutionary

if

he

does

not want to be

a

collaborator.21

History

and

Speechlessness

Benjamin

advances, thus,

a

theory

of

history

as trauma-and a cor-

relative

theory

of the historical

conversion

of trauma into

insight. History

consists

of

chains

of traumatic

interruptions

rather

than of

sequences

of

rational causalities. But the traumatized-the subjects of history-are de-

prived

of

a

language

in

which to

speak

of

their victimization.

The

relation

between

history

and trauma is

speechless.

Traditional theories

of

history

tend to

neglect

this

speechlessness

of trauma:

by

definition,

speech-

lessness

is

what

remains

out of

the record.

But it

is

specifically

to this

speechless

connection

between

history

and trauma that

Benjamin's

own

theory

of

history

intends now to

give

voice.

He

does so

by showing

how the

very discipline,

the

very "concept

of

history"

is constituted

by

what

it

excludes

(and

fails to

grasp).22 History

(to sum up) is thus inhabited by a historical unconscious related to-

and founded on-a double silence: the silence of "the

tradition of the

oppressed,"

who are

by

definition

deprived

of voice and whose

story

(or

whose

narrative

perspective)

is

always

systematically

reduced to

silence;

and the

silence

of official

history-the

victor's

history-with

respect

to

the tradition

of

the

oppressed. According

to

Benjamin,

the hidden

theo-

retical

centrality

of

this double silence defines

historiography

as

such.

This

in

general

is the

way

in which

history

is

told,

or, rather,

this is

in

general

the

way

in

which

history

is silenced.

The

triumph

of Fascism

and

the outbreak of the Second World War constitute only the most climactic

demonstration,

the

most

aberrant materialization or

realization

of

this

historiography.

Whereas the

task

of the

philosopher

of

history

is thus to

take

apart

"the

concept

of

history" by

showing

its

deceptive

continuity

to be

in

fact

a

process

of

silencing,

the task of the historian is to

reconstruct what his-

21.

For a

historiography

free of

complicity,

we

must disassociate ourselves from our

accustomed

thinking:

Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where think-

ing

suddenly stops

in

a

configuration

pregnant

with

tensions,

it

gives

that

configura-

tion a

shock,

by

which it

crystallizes

into

a

monad.

A

historical materialist

approaches

a

historical

subject only

where he encounters it as a

monad.

In this

structure he

recognizes

a

sign

of a Messianic cessation of

happening,

or,

put differently,

a revolu-

tionary

chance

in

the

fight

for the

oppressed

past.

["TPH,"

pp.

262-63;

emphasis

mine]

22.

The

original

and current German title of the

essay

is,

precisely,

"On the

Concept

of

History"

("Ober

den

Begriff

der

Geschichte").


15/35

214 ShoshanaFelman

Benjamin's

ilence

tory

has

silenced,

to

give

voice to

the

dead and

to

the

vanquished

and

to

resuscitate

the

unrecorded,

silenced,

hidden

story

of the

oppressed.

3

The

Event

I

would like

now

to look backward from

the

theory

to the

autobiogra-

phy

and to

try

to reach the

roots of

Benjamin's

conceptual insights

in

an

original

event whose

theoretical

and

autobiographical

significance

re-

mains totally ungrasped in the voluminous critical literature on Benja-

min. The event

takes

place

at the outbreak of the First World War.

It

consists

in

the

conjunction

of the German invasion

of

Belgium

on

4

Au-

gust

1914 with the

joint

suicide,

four

days

later,

of

Benjamin's

best

friend,

Fritz

Heinle,

and of

Heinle's

girlfriend.

A

farewell

express

letter of the

now-dead

friend informs

Benjamin

where to find the bodies.

This

shared

readiness

to die and this

joint

act of self-inflicted

violence is

interpreted

by

Benjamin

and his friends

as a

symbolic

gesture

of

protest against

the

war.

For

Benjamin,

the event is therefore one

of

loss,

of

shock,

of disillu-

sionment, and of awakening to a reality of an inexorable, tragic historical

connection between

youth

and death. For the

world,

it is the outbreak of

the

First

World

War.

The

impact

of this event

marks a

dramatic

turning point

in

Benja-

min's life and

in his

thought.

Before

this

event,

Benjamin

is

involved

in

political

activism

in

the

youth

movement,

working

to revolutionize Ger-

man

society

and culture

through

a

radical reform of education.

In the

youth groups

supporting

this

reform,

he holds

a

position

of

strong

lead-

ership

as

president

of the Berlin Free Students' Union. After

the

event,

he abdicates his

leadership

and turns

away

from

political activity.

He

gives

up any public

role

along

with the belief that

language

can

directly

become

action.

He breaks

with his

admired

teacher,

Wyneken,

of whose

ideas he

has been

both the

disciple

and the ardent follower. Because

this former

mentor now

guides youth

toward the

war,

Benjamin

realizes

that

philoso-

phy

has failed

and that

authority

can no

longer

be relied

on: "'theoria

in

you

has

been

blinded,"'

he writes to

Wyneken,

in

severing

his

links

with

him.23

In

the

duplicity

of

governments,

in

the

duplicity

of

teachers,

and

in

the isolated words of the letter of a dead youth telling Benjamin-the

friend,

the

leader,

the collaborator-where to find

the

bodies,

language

has

betrayed.

But the

betrayal

constitutes

precisely

the

event;

the

betrayal

is

precisely

history. "Midway through

its

journey,"

Benjamin

will

write,

"nature

finds itself

betrayed

by

language,

and that

powerful

blocking

of

23.

Quoted

in

"Chronology,

1892-1926,"

in

Selected

Writings,

p.

499.


16/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter1999

215

feeling

turns

to sorrow.

Thus,

with

the

ambiguity

of the

word,

its

signifying

power, language

falters. ...

History

becomes

equal

to

signification

in hu-

man

language;

this

language

is frozen in

signification."24

Refusing

to

participate

in the

betrayal

of

language

and

in the

mad-

ness of the

war,

Benjamin

leaves

Germany

for Switzerland and resorts to

a

silence

that will last six

years,

until

1920.25

During

these

years,

he does

not

publish

anything.

He writes and circulates

among

close

friends a

text

on

H1lderlin

in

which he

meditates

on

the nature

of the

lyric

and its

relation

to the

poet's

death. The

poet's

death

relates

to

Heinle's death.

Heinle also

has

left

poems,

which

Benjamin

reads and

rereads

in

an at-

tempt

to

deepen

his

acquaintance

with

the dead.

It

is,

indeed,

as

a

dead

poet

that he now comes to know his friend. But

Benjamin

vows to

give

the dead

poet

immortality:

to save

Heinle

from

oblivion,

to save the

sui-

cide

from

its

meaninglessness,

by

publishing

his

friend's

poetic

work.

This

hope

will

never be

relinquished.

In

the

years

of

silence

following

the sui-

cide,

he edits Heinle's

manuscripts.

Benjamin's

own text

on

H1lderlin

and on the nature of the

lyric

is also an

implicit dialogue

with

Heinle's

work,

a

dialogue

with

Heinle's

writing

as well

as with his

life and with

his

death.

Hence,

Benjamin's

specific

interest

in

two

poems

by

Holderlin,

"The

Poet's

Courage"

and

"Timidity,"

which

designate

the

difference be-

tween Heinle's

(suicidal)

courage

and the

timidity

of

Benjamin's

own

(condemnation

to)

survival:

suicide or survival-two

existential

stances

between which

Benjamin

no

doubt has

oscillated but which he

declares

to

be,

surprisingly

and

paradoxically,

two

"versions"

of

the

same

pro-

found

text,

deeply comparable

or similar

despite

their

difference.26

Belated

Understanding

This drama and this suicide

are narrated

(among

other

things)

in

Benjamin's

most

personal

autobiography,

"A

Berlin

Chronicle."

I

will ar-

gue

that for

Benjamin,

this

autobiographical

narrative

becomes

an

alle-

gory

of the

ungrasped impact

of the First

World

War.

But

"A

Berlin

Chronicle" is written

eighteen

years

later,

in

1932.

The

direct result of the

events of the

war

at the time

of their

ungraspable

occurrence

is

that

Benjamin quite

literally

falls silent.

And

especially,

quite literally

and

strictly

silent,

speechless

about

the

subject

of

the war:

as

though

by

oath

of

loyalty

to the

dead

friend;

as

though

his

own

speech,

or the

language

of

youth they shared,

had

equally

committed suicide.

Something

within him

has died as

well.

The

traumatic

(and,

belatedly,

24.

Benjamin,

"The Role of

Language

in

Trauerspiel

nd

Tragedy,"

Selected

Writings,

p.

60.

25.

Compare

Momme

Brodersen,

Walter

Benjamin:

A

Biography,

trans.

Malcolm

R.

Green

and

Ingrida

Ligers,

ed.

Martina

Dervi?

(London,

1996),

p.

118.

26.

Benjamin,

"Two

Poems

by

Friedrich

H1lderlin,"

p.

33.


17/35

216

Shoshana

Felman

Benjamin's

ilence

theoretical)

significance

of this

silence remains

equally

ungrasped

by

critics,

who

keep expressing

their

politically

correct

critique

of it and their

amazement at this eccentricity of Benjamin. Nor does anybody grasp

the

profound

connection

of this

early

silence to the

later,

much admired

classic

essays,

"The

Storyteller"

and

"Theses

on

the

Philosophy

of

His-

tory." Benjamin's

early experience

is,

thus,

on the

contrary, separated

from

his

later

theory

and is

at once dismissed

and

trivialized: "Silence as

an

expression

of inner

protest

at

contemporary

events: little doubt was

cast on

the

legitimacy

of such

a

stance at the

time,"

the

latest

biographer

Momme

Brodersen

historicizes.27

The editors of the

Harvard

volume,

more

tuned

in,

feel

equally

compelled

to mark a

pious

reservation: "Re-

markably enough, Benjamin's letters ... focus exclusively on personal

issues.

...

There

is

rarely

mention of the

war,

and no direct consideration

of

it

or

of his attitude toward

it.

It

is

as

if

Benjamin's injunction

against

political

activity

at the time also

precluded cognizance

of the most diffi-

cult

events

of the

day."28

What critics fail to see is how

Benjamin's

own

narration

of his war

experience

in "A

Berlin Chronicle"

is

precisely,

quint-

essentially,

an

autobiographical

(and theoretical)

account

of

the

meaning

of

his silence.

4

The

SubjectRepresented

y

the

"I"

Eleven

pages

into

"A

Berlin

Chronicle,"

Benjamin begins

the narra-

tion of his

war

experience

by

insisting

on his reluctance

to

say

"I":

If

I

write better German

than most writers

of

my

generation,

it is

thanks

largely

to

twenty years'

observance of one little rule: never

use

the

word

"I"

except

in

letters.

["BC,"

p.

15]

However,

Benjamin

adds

ironically,

in this solicited

piece

he

has

accepted

not

just

to

say

"I"

but to

be

paid

for

it; if,

therefore,

these

subjective

notes

have

become

longer

than he had

intended,

it

is not

only

because the

subject,

"accustomed

for

years

to

waiting

in

the

wings,

would not so

easily

be summoned

to

the

limelight"

but also

because,

metaphorically

and

lit-

erally,

"the

precaution

of the

subject

represented by

the

'I'

...

is entitled

not to be sold cheap" ("BC,"pp. 15-16).

The

autobiographical

impulse

is therefore

in

conflict

with a

speech-

lessness,

a muteness

of the

"I"

that

constantly

defeats narration

from

in-

side.

And,

yet,

the text

originates

in

an

imperative

to

tell,

in

a

symbolic

27.

Brodersen,

Walter

Benjamin,

p.

89.

28.

"Chronology,

1892-1926,"

p.

502.


18/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter1999

217

debt

that

goes beyond

the

personal

and that makes narration

unavoid-

able and

indispensable.

What

is

at

stake,

says

Benjamin,

are

"deep

and

harrowing experiences"

that constitute "the most important memories

in

one's

life"

("BC,"

p.

16).

Of these

experiences,

all the other

witnesses

are

now dead:

"I

alone

remain"

("BC,"

p.

17).

The ethical

impetus

of

the

narration stems

from this aloneness

and

from this

necessity:

since

the

narrator

is

the

last

surviving

witness,

history

must be

told

despite

the

narrator's

muteness.

The

narrator sees himself surrounded

by

dead

doubles,

younger

than

himself or of his

age,

dead witnesses

who,

had

they

been

alive,

might

have

helped

him to cross the difficult

thresholds

of

memory

but whose dead

faces

now

appear

to

him

"only

as

an answer

to the

question

whether

forty

[Benjamin's age

at the time of writing] is

not too

young

an

age

at which

to

evoke

the

most

important

memories

of

one's

life"

("BC,"

p.

16).

"A

Berlin Chronicle"

implicitly

announces, thus,

the author's

fortieth

birthday,

with which its

writing

coincides. The

auto-

biographer

celebrates

his

birthday by

mourning

for the death

of his con-

temporaries.

From the

start,

death

and

birth

are

juxtaposed.

"Berlin"

is

the

name for

this

juxtaposition.

Prosopopeia

Longing

for the

complementary

narration

of his

dead

doubles and

identified

with their eternal

silence,

the

speaker

in

fact writes

an

epitaph

much more than

a

biography.

"A

Berlin

Chronicle"

is an

autobiography

that

is

inherently,

profoundly

epitaphic

and that

seeks, thus,

not

expres-

sion

but

precisely

"the

expressionless":

the moment

in

which

life

is

"petri-

fied

and

as

if

spellbound

in

a

single

moment"

("GEA,"

p.

340).

In line

with

Benjamin's analysis

of "the

expressionless,"

the

writing

possesses

a

"critical

violence" that

interrupts expression,

with which

"every

expres-

sion

simultaneously

comes to a standstill" with the

abruptness

of "a moral

dictum"

("GEA,"

pp.

340, 341,

340).

"Only

the

expressionless completes

the

work,

by

shattering

it into

a

thing

of

shards,

into

a

fragment

of the

true

world,

into the torso

of a

symbol"

("GEA,"

p.

340).

To use the termi-

nology

of Paul de

Man,

we

might say

that

in "A

Berlin Chronicle"

"autobi-

ography

veils

a defacement

of the mind

of which it is itself the cause."29

De Man's rhetorical

analysis

is here

particularly pertinent:

"the

dominant

figure

of the

epitaphic

or

autobiographical

discourse

is ...

the

prosopo-

peia,"

"the fiction

of an

apostrophe

to an

absent, deceased,

or

voiceless

entity,

which

posits

the

possibility

of the latter's

reply

and confers

upon

it

the

power

of

speech.""30

I would

suggest,

indeed,

that an

implicit figure

of

prosopopeia

struc-

29.

Paul de

Man,

"Autobiography

as

De-Facement,"

The

Rhetoric

of

Romanticism

New

York,

1984),

p.

81.

30.

Ibid.,

pp.

77,

75-76.


19/35

218 ShoshanaFelman

Benjamin's

ilence

tures not

just

Benjamin's

autobiography

but

his

entire

work;

the

underly-

ing, understated evocation of the dead is present and can be deciphered

everywhere. Benjamin's

whole

writing

could be read

as

work

of mourn-

ing,

structured

by

a

mute address

to

the dead face

and

the

lost

voice

of

the

young

friend who took his

own

life

in

desperate protest

in

the

first

days

of

the

First

World War.

In

all

mourning

there

is

the

deepest

inclination to

speechlessness,

which

is

infinitely

more than the

inability

or

disinclination

to com-

municate.31

All of

Benjamin's

evolving

subjects,

I will

argue,

are

implicitly

determined

by

the

conceptual implications

of

the

underlying

autobiographical proso-

popeia,

or the mute

address

to the dead friend:

lyric

("Heinle

was

a

poet"

["BC,"

p.

17]),

language

("Because

she

is

mute,

nature

mourns"),

Trauer-

spiel

(the

corpse

is

the sole bearer

of

signification),

and,

finally, history

itself:

In

allegory

the observer

is

confronted

with the

facies hippocratica

ago-

nizer's

face]

of

history

as a

petrified, primordial landscape. Every-

thing

about

history

that,

from the

very beginning,

has been

untimely,

sorrowful, unsuccessful,

is

expressed

in

a face-or rather

in

a death's

head.

[OG,

p.

166]

A

Lectureon the Nature

of

the

Lyric,

or

The

Face

of

History

(A

Primal

Scene)

It is

precisely

as a

metaphor

for

his entire

work

as

inarticulate

proso-

popeia

that

Benjamin

describes

the lecture

on Holderlin and on "the

nature of the

lyric"

that,

after Heinle's

suicide,

he

struggled

to articulate

in

memory

of his deceased

friend.

It is

significant

that

"A

Berlin

Chronicle"'s

narration

of

the

war

events and

of

its

"harrowing

experiences"

starts

(disorientingly,

hermeti-

cally)

by

the

description

of this

lecture-by

the

mediation,

that

is,

of

the

trauma

by

the

work,

by

the translation

of

the

lived

event

into

a

thought

on

literature.

"A

Berlin

Chronicle" cannot

go directly

either

to the

proper

name of the dead

friend or to the actual

story

of

his

death.

Temporally

as well as

spatially,

the

story

keeps moving

in

circles,

as

though

around

an

empty,

silent center. The word suicide does not

figure

in the text.

Heinle's

name

is

introduced

as

though

in

passing:

it

vanishes as soon as

31.

Benjamin,

"On

Language

as Such and

on

the

Language

of

Man,"

trans.

Jephcott,

Selected

Writings, p.

73: "Even where there is

only

a

rustling

of

plants,

there

is

always

a

lament. Because she

is

mute,

nature mourns.

Yet

the

inversion of this

proposition

leads

even

further

into

the essence

of

nature;

the sadness

of

nature

makes her

mute"

(ibid.).


20/35

Critical

Inquiry

Winter

1999

219

it

is

mentioned;

and so does the event.

Throughout

the

text,

the

name

and the event

keep vanishing.

It was

in

Heidelberg, during

what was

undoubtedly self-forgetful

work,

that I

tried

to summon

up,

in

a

meditation

on

the nature of

the

lyric,

the

figure

of

my

friend

Fritz

Heinle,

around whom

all

the

happenings

in

the

Meeting

House

arrange

themselves and with

whom

they

vanish. Fritz

Heinle

was a

poet,

and

the

only

one of them

all whom I met not

"in

real life"

but

in

his

work.

He

died

at

nineteen,

and could be

known

in

no other

way.

All

the

same,

this

first

attempt

to

evoke the

sphere

of his life

through

that

of

poetry

was

unsuccess-

ful, and the immediacy of the experience that gave rise to my lecture

asserted itself

irresistibly

in

the

incomprehension

and

snobbery

of

the audience.

["BC,"

p.

17]32

In a roundabout

way,

what

Benjamin

is

trying

to evoke

is

not

H61der-

lin

but

history:

an

original

historical

event that

has

remained

completely

untranslatable.

History

is "the

original,"

the

writings,

its

translations. The

task

of

the translator

is

the witness's task.

The lecture

tried,

but

failed,

to

translate the

impact

of the event.

Nevertheless,

the

lecture

gives

a

sense

of the remoteness, of the unapproachability of the historical event. Be-

hind this failed translation of

the lecture

on

H1lderlin

and on the

nature

of the

lyric,

the untranslatable historical

original-the

lived

experience

of

the outbreak

of

the

war-constitutes

for

Benjamin

a

veritable intellec-

tual and existential

primal

scene.

The

Meeting

House

(Das Heim)

What, then,

is the

core of the

historical event that cannot be

ap-

proached but must be distanced even in the very act of bearing witness

to it? What

is

the

meaning

of the

story

that

the text cannot

arrive

at,

cannot

reach,

cannot

begin except

through

what has

followed,

the

lecture

that

attempted

to translate

it-unsuccessfully?

It is

the

story

of a

death

without

signification,

though pregnant

with

sense,

with life and

with

emotion. It is

the

story

of a

meeting

and of a

Meeting

House

that turns

out

to

be,

ironically,

the

house

of an

encounter

with a

corpse,

the

posthumous symbol

of

a

lost

community

and of

the

loss of

language

as

communal,

and the

empty

center

of

the

space

of

the

remembrance of so many missed encounters: a missed encounter with

the audience

of

the

lecture;

a

missed encounter

with

the

war;

a missed

encounter

with

the friend

who,

dying

so

young,

dies before

he

could be

32.

The

incomprehension

of

the audience then

could

ironically today

s

Documents

Benjamin's Silence